The story I heard is Silver is willing, but they really can't get UA's attention right now even if they propose flying at their own risk.  UA has bigger fish to fry. Maybe after the last of the 767-200's and 737-500's are gone the pressure on the fleet will ease up. 

Based on some comments by the UA scheduling guy (Hart?), it sounds as if 2012 is a shake-down cruise for the merged operation; 2013 schedules will aim for greater innovation and synergy in ... fingers crossed ... an improved economy.

Colgan/Pinnacle today applied to discontinue their subsidized Saab routes from IAD to Altoona, Johnstown, Morgantown, Clarksburg, Beckley, and Staunton.

With Silver soon to have excess B1900s, it's easy to see them applying for CLE – Altoona and Johnstown, PA. They applied for those two routes the last time they were competed.  They could also go for Morgantown and Clarksburg, but those are smaller traffic points and farther away. Beckley is probably too far south to make sense at all unless they could somehow combine it with the Greenbrier flights to Lewisburg. And Staunton may fail to attract any bids at all; it's so close to Charlottesville, which has a pretty decent amount of service.

I'd say AOO and JST are almost sure things; we'll see about the others.

Sad to say, Pinnacle seems headed for bankruptcy.

Looks like Silver wants an IAD hub. They proposed AOO/JST-IAD service to the DOT on Wednesday with Saabs. So far they have not applied for the other routes Colgan has applied to quit.

Undoubtedly, the Saab/IAD proposal will be costlier than a Beech/CLE proposal, but the DOT has not been rejecting gold-plated EAS proposals lately and it is an election year, so ...not good news.

Pinnacle's bankruptcy today and forecast ending of Saab flying by July may mean exciting times for Silver. Pinnacle also plans to end Q400 flying by November, cutting about 3 acft per month, which combined should make for some exciting UA scheduling.